Stem Cell discoveries give hope and promise to human health and longevity. Some have questioned the ethics of stem cell use to prolong life, regenerate body parts, and maintain human health for religious reasons. Not everything is as cut and dry, and these cells only work as well as they have been programmed and they can be hijacked quite easily and cause other problems in the event the individual has a diseased area where they are injected or even a cancer.
In fact there was a very interesting article recently in “Positive Futurist – Cutting Edge News and Information Covering Science, Technology, and the Evolving World” which was published on May 10, 2011 titled; “Future of Healthcare: Stem Cells, Genetics, Remote Monitoring” by Dick Pelletier. In the article was an interesting prediction;
“Though more research is needed to realize all the hopes and dreams of this ‘stem cell magic’, progress is advancing exponentially; especially in areas of creating dissolvable housing systems (templates) that direct stem cells to grow into specific parts, such as hearts, livers, pancreas, muscles, bones, eyes, skin, and teeth. However, researchers have noticed that stem cells degrade in quality as people age, thus, they will offer people the ability to “bank” their stem cells for future use.”
Perhaps you will recall when Senator Edward Kennedy had brain cancer, and it was thought that a revolutionary new treatment using these cells might save him. What many people did not understand is by putting them into that area of his brain, it would only have caused those cells to be hijacked into cancer cells which would do the opposite of curing him. In other words, it would help the tumor grow, not contract or be pushed out by new brain cells. There may be other future experimental techniques that might work, we shall see in the future.
Whereas the concept is legitimate, science has found that indistinguishable stem cells will become whatever they are told to become, and can be easily hijacked into cancer cells. The banking and backup makes sense for other things, and could very much help with the longevity of an individual. However as people get older the copies of their cells are not quite as good, and there is more and more bad-information going on.
Thus, these techniques for certain types of cancer are not a viable option for the future, even if they hold promises and solutions for other diseases, and increasing human longevity. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it. If you have any new research, comments, questions, or case studies I’d sure like you to contact me by e-mail.